Dark City the TV Series

I mentioned in my previous entry that Astro Ria starts airing the Dark City TV series tonight (or last night, by the time I post this). It has nothing to do with Dark City the book, and a favourite argument in relevant threads now is that the name “Dark City” have already been used by a movie so Xeus isn’t allowed to run around crying foul.

Go read up the following links and comments if you want the back story:

• Stolen City?
• Check out the DARK CITY TV Series
• Speedlinking: Dark City TV Series Controversy?

So watched the show earlier. I don’t watch TV on a general rule, and I know how to operate the DVD player better than I knew how to find Astro Ria. After about 5 minutes of scrolling through every channel on Astro, I found it just as it was starting.

“Death Row” (directed by Tony Pietra and written by Allan Koay) is about a sadistic prison warden who finds himself trying to one-up a death row inmate with tales of cruelty inflicted on other people. The warden’s stories are told in flashback. The death row inmate spends the duration of the episode bathed in eerie green light.

At some point, the warden opens the cell door and joins the green inmate inside the cell, where they spent a greater part of the episode posing artistically in the frame. I understand that him entering the cell is a key point in the plot, but I fail to identify which universe allows wardens to associate with death row prisoners in this way. Maybe that’s the whole point they are trying to convey. I probably missed something while I was clipping my nails.

I think the best part of the whole episode is when that cute warden’s expression when from wordless shocked to wordless outrage in about 5 seconds.

I won’t spoil the story for those of you who are planning to catch it on re-run, but I get this feeling that this story looked better on paper than it did on film. This is the genre I write in and the kind of twist I might have used myself; I just don’t fancy the execution. (Look, pun!)

The beginning dragged. If I didn’t deliberately sit down to watch this, I would have wandered off to another channel before anything more interesting happens. I’m annoyed by the prison bars, which is often in the way of what we should be focusing on. The warden’s bad teeth was an amusing touch but very distracting.

I also find it baffling that the title and episodes have English names but the show is in Malay.

I’m all for local filmmakers getting their work out. But if this is the kind of quality to expect from the Dark City series, uhm… let’s just say I won’t be bothered to put down whatever book I happened to be reading at the time to turn the TV on.

But don’t listen to me. Greater shows have tried and failed to keep me glued to the idiot box.

Related posts:

• Notes from all around

Notes from all around

I’m working on a more substantial post but it’s taking some time because I have to dig for URLs and info. In the meanwhile, here’s a couple of other things that’s distracting me.

AMP
It’s like myspace music, except less annoying! It’s off to a good start as Asia’s music resource, serving as a hub for musicians to meet other musicians, and for music lover to discover new music. After creating a profile, you can add songs to your playlist. Here’s my profile and some of the songs I’m listening to.

ElectroCity
I’m so addicted to this game. It’s like SimCity with an environmental message and quite easy to grasp after a few trial-&-error games. Sez the website:

ElectroCity is a new online computer game that lets players manage their own virtual towns and cities. It’s great fun to play and also teaches players all about energy, sustainability and environmental management in New Zealand.

Dark Cities collide
Remember that anthology my short story was accepted into? Astro is launching the Dark City TV series tomorrow, but hold your applause… this is not related to the original book. As usual, Sharon Bakar has the story, so I will just direct you over to her entry.

TV rots your brain

Take it from someone who haven’t watched TV in so long, she forgot how to turn it on.

So in the last few weeks, I dropped into a dark place in my mind where spending too much time alone with my thoughts was decidedly an unhealthy thing. I plugged the hole with TV series and DVDs I’ve been saving for a rainy day.

Books? Nah. Reading is like getting up in the morning (although more interesting) and when the natural rhythm of life derails, so does everything associated with it. I’ve been meaning to reply Sharon’s post about what we’re currently reading, but Blogger won’t let me comment.

I just finished reading Kam Raslan’s “Confession of an Old Boy”, which I highly recommend. Earlier, I was trying to get into Nizam Zakaria’s “Susuk”, but the prose in the first couple of pages is so wooden that I gave up. I’ve already read the English version by Amir Hafizi, so that’ll have to do for the review.

But this was supposed to be about movies and TV.

Apart from the weekly movie review (Spider-Man 3, do I really need to talk about that), I haven’t been watching much from my small hoard of DVDs. I popped in”Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus” this afternoon, which was strange and sad and whimsical and inclined to artsy.

I’m up-to-date with Veronica Mars (S3). The latest Heroes episode is sitting in my dad’s HD waiting to be watched with my brother.

I finished watching Supernatural Season 1. I hate how it ended, but things like that are designed to make sure you stick around for the next season. I don’t find it nearly as engaging as VMars or Heroes, but it passed the time and there’s a few episodes that I’d watch again. About halfway through that marathon, I remembered that Jared Padaleki was supposed to be Young MacGyver but it never got beyond the pilot.

Outside that, it’s been a lot of sleeping.

How do I know all that rotted my brain? I’m no closer to feeling better about much. I’ve only succeeded in distracting myself.

Speaking of distracting myself, I’m off for a bit of pillaging on the high seas before bed.

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